


synonyms for echoes

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role), kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21799138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: Matthew remembers the weight of a sword in his hand. He's never held a sword before in his life.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 97





	synonyms for echoes

**Author's Note:**

> this is the most self indulgent thing I have ever written, which is saying something

\------

Matthew remembers the weight of a sword in his hand. The instructors, few that they were, gave him shit over his poor form and he didn’t know to say that he was used to something longer and heavier and then they handed him a shotgun and he had no habits to unlearn.

(he’d never held a sword before in his life)

\--

What he doesn’t say later is that he didn’t try to run at first, when people started dying. He tries to fight, first with a shotgun and then with a saber and everyone is dying and he’s _alone-_

That’s when he runs.

\--

Trading out personalities and voices (and faces) feels-

(he speaks in one town with a british accent, of all things, and it rests as easy on his tongue as all the others have)

\--

 _Rebirth_ , says the man in the chapel and he thinks, strangely, of seaweed. 

\--

He thinks of God as _She_ , and after enough corrections and strange looks trains himself to say He.

(he whispers his prayers the way he prefers, and there is a name hovering nebulous somewhere out of his grasp)

\--

He keeps his head down but not well enough and gets a sliced up face for the trouble and is briefly annoyed that it’s on the wrong side.

(his face looks more like his somehow)

\--

The half burnt down church smells like damp wood and cool air and, bizarrely, tar. He sleeps in the mostly intact room above the church, the frame of the building still sturdy but creaking softly in the autumn breeze.

He dreams of ships.

\--

Fighting monsters with people he just met should not be giving him deja vu.

\--

“-and I shall give you power,” the thing says. 

Matthew thinks of cold and dark and drowning and a great eye pierced by vines.

\--

The dead things in the street feel like burning and corruption and they need to be _gone_ -

Lightning leaps from his hands and he’s somehow not surprised that it’s green.

\--

(the Dealer does not visit him and he drifts in an ocean that feels like home and he’s never seen a shoreline in his life)

\--

“-if God made us in his image, God's every bit as feral as the things he created. No offense, Reverend,” Clayton says, and Matthew blinks at him because why on earth would feral be an insult, She is-

Matthew blinks the spots out of his eyes and says “Of course not, none taken.”

\--

Aly is still bleeding so he reaches over because this is what he does this is what he’s for when one of the others isn’t able to-

The world blacks out for a moment. He’s still blinking off the disorientation as Aly’s wound smooths out into healed skin under his hands.

\--

“What if I told you the law was wrong?”

(Aly doesn’t draw his gun)

\--

(She visits him in his dreams that night, grand as the sky over the plains and voice like sun warmed stone.

 _You’ve wandered so far, my dear,_ she says, speaking a name he cannot hear, _you will find your way home, as you have found your way to me. For now, my paladin-_ )

Matthew wakes up slow and comfortable with sunlight across his face. He wakes, and he thinks for a moment that his hands are dark green and clawed. He blinks and they’re normal.

He gets up and he gets ready for the day, and the one after that and after that.

He does not remember.

(yet)

\--


End file.
